FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage Collector's Edition

FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage Collector's Edition

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Adding/Replacing music for Flatout UC - tutorial
By Tuner
I've seen guides that provide pre-made music mods, so I wanted to create a guide that will let you make a music mod with your own music. This guide provides instructions on how to create a music mod yourself.
   
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Edit, update 25th July 2024
As it turns out in order for the music mod to work, you must have at least 2 songs for menu tracks and race tracks, otherwise the game will crash.
Introduction - tools needed
To start creating a music mod of your own, you will need two main tools:
BF3Pack Smart - googling "flatout uc bfs file unpacker" should show a video that has the program in description to download
Any music editing software, alternatively online converter (mp3 to ogg, wav to ogg, [Any file format your song has] to ogg).I personally use Audacity.

Something to convert your music to ogg is needed as that's more less the only sound format the game can read.

BF3Pack Smart is a tool that works with Flatout UC's BFS file system. It can pack folders into bfs files and unpack bfs files into folders. I recommend using bfs3pack_smart_gui as it's easier to use.
In order to pack a folder using gui, you open the program and drag the folder on the small window. It will then ask you where you want to save the bfs file. Similarly, you unpack a bfs file by draging it over the window and pointing where it should be unpacked.
Preparing the mod
Create a folder named "data". Inside that folder create another folder named "music". This is required as that's Flatout UC's filepath for track list. By setting up a new bfs file with these two folders, we can override base track list with the new one specified in our mod.

Now, inside the music folder we need to create at minimum two files:
playlist_ingame.bed
playlist_title.bed

You can create these by renaming a .txt file with .bed extension.

Playlist files
Unlike in Flatout 2, Flatout UC's playlist references a folder outside the bfs file. Specifically, it references data/songs in Flatout UC directory. As such, in the bfs you only create playlist files that contain which files the game should look for and what track information it should show.

Fortunately, just like in Flatout 2, both playlist files have exact same structure. The best way to explain it is by providing an example:
Loop = { Count = 6, [1] = { File = "data/songs/01.ogg", Artist = "Cocoa", Song = "Lonely Night", StartPos = 0, }, [2] = { File = "data/songs/09.ogg", Artist = "Aki", Song = "Tiny Love", StartPos = 0, }, [3] = { File = "data/songs/21.ogg", Artist = "Nu-Ko", Song = "Bloody Devil", StartPos = 0, }, [4] = { File = "data/songs/08.ogg", Artist = "Nu-Ko", Song = "Emerald Anchor", StartPos = 0, }, [5] = { File = "data/songs/10.ogg", Artist = "Su-San", Song = "Hotaru-iro -Moonlight-", StartPos = 0, }, [6] = { File = "data/songs/16.ogg", Artist = "Koshida Rute Takahito", Song = "Rock In Baby (D.I.L. Mix)", StartPos = 0, }, }
This code will make the game play songs from a six track playlist.

"Loop" brackets open at the beginning and end at the very end of the code. They indicate that it's a code for our filesystem.

"Count" states how many tracks the game should expect. 6 means that the playlist should have 6 tracks information provided.

The most important part is the track info itself. Each track you want to add follows following formula:

[which track added it is] = {
File = "data/songs/[filename.ogg]",
Artist = "[Name of the artist]",
Song = "[Name of the song]",
StartPos = 0,
},

In example above, I named all music files numers, from 01 to 22. That is not necessary - you can name the file anything you want, whether it is a number or the track name, as long as it is in the ogg format.

Packing up/moving song files
After you have prepared playlist files using code from previous section, you should now have something like this:

data -> music -> playlist_ingame.bed and playlist_title.bed

Use bf3pack_smart to pack the data folder. I recommend naming the bfs file "songs.bfs". Open Flatout UC directory and move the newly created bfs file in it.

Inside Flatout UC there is a "filesystem" file with no extention. Edit it with notepad and add a new line "song.bfs" at the bottom. Make sure you haven't created an extra empty line, easiest way to check is using arrow keys (if it goes down the line to an empty line then delete the line using backspace). Save and close the file.

This is the part which actually includes song files. Again, all songs you want to use need to be in .ogg file.

Assuming you haven't used bfs3pack before, "Data" folder inside Flatout UC directory should not contain much, but it definitely has a "Songs" folder. Open it. Inside the folder are default songs that play in the game. You can either remove them or keep them in, no difference. Add songs you specificied in playlist files here.

Assuming everything was done correctly, booting up the game should now show the new playlist as well as play the songs you added.
Possible issues
In case something goes wrong, here are some issues I could think of:

Booting up the game shows "Invalid archive version" - You used bfs2pack instead of bf3pack. bfs2pack creates bfs files for Flatout 2. Unfortunately it's not compatible with Flatout UC.

The game boots up but the default playlist plays/default song names show but no song plays - in both cases there probably is an error in the playlist files. If any mistake appears in playlist files, the game will immediately ignore it and default to regular playlist. No song playing means on top of that you removed the default songs. In either case, make sure the code is correct. If it is, make sure you are packing the data folder, inside of which there is the music folder, inside of which there are the playlist files.

The game boots up and the new song names show, but no sound is playing - the files are either not placed in the Songs folder or are the wrong format. The music files are not to be put in the bfs file (unlike Flatout 2). Make sure the music files are in the correct place.
Ending notes.
Hopefully the guide explains well enough how to create a music mod of your own.

The tutorial skips replacing stunt music. If you wish to replace stunt songs as well, you create a playlist_stunt file with the exact same formula as other files. Thanks for reading!
28 Comments
f2346ghtuy57j5 29 Aug @ 6:12pm 
if the pitch is wrong just change .ogg sample rate from 48khz to 44.1khz and it should work fine:)
maikoheart 29 Jul @ 11:01am 
Discord if you prefer: maikoheart
maikoheart 29 Jul @ 10:59am 
I sent you a request, I also have some songs that aren't playing but are in the right format and are in the right folder (at least I think so)
Tuner  [author] 29 Jul @ 10:55am 
It's hard for me to guess knowing only that the pitch is wrong, which doesn't point to anything on its own. The best thing I can do to help is ask you to send me mod files you use so I can check them and see myself
maikoheart 29 Jul @ 10:53am 
Didn't seem to do anything. I wonder what it could even be.
maikoheart 29 Jul @ 10:49am 
I'll mess around with the file names, maybe simply spaces are messing it up or whatever. Sucks, I got it to work but this is the only thing that is tripping me up.
Tuner  [author] 29 Jul @ 10:44am 
Nothing that immediately comes to my mind. But considering how many eird quirks come out when modding the game, I figure it may be caused by a particular thing that I didn't consider in the guide. Like we recently found out the game refuses to use one track playlists.
maikoheart 29 Jul @ 10:41am 
Any reason why my music is slower and lower pitched than what it should be? I checked my files with Audacity and nothing suggests they should be like that.
SecretAgentKiiN 特务健 27 Jul @ 6:37am 
Impressive :FH5Kudos:
Tuner  [author] 25 Jul @ 6:48am 
Sent a friend request on discord.
I have decided that the best way to resolve this is if you could upload the files somewhere so I can take a look at them myself